climate change

By Gideon RachmanThe relative strengths of nationalism and internationalism were tested in France over the weekend. And this time the internationalists came out ahead. In Paris, Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, was able to bring down his flashy green gavel and announce that almost 200 nations had agreed a climate change deal.

What hope for the Paris climate talks?
How much progress is likely at this week’s global talks on combating climate change? Gideon Rachman discusses the prospects for agreement on reducing carbon emissions with Michael Stothard and Martin Sandbu.

Barack Obama’s climate plan
President Barack Obama this week unveiled America’s most far reaching action so far on climate change by imposing stringent emissions cuts on the power sector. Orla Ryan asks Pilita Clark and Barney Jopson about the significance of the move.

The Obama administration has launched the most ambitious plan in US history to combat climate change by proposing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power stations. But business groups and Republican politicians have vigorously attacked the proposals.

In the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the FT looked at what happened to the leaders of the protests there. The South China Morning Post’s Tiananmen retrospective is rich with footage from 1989 as well as a clip from the “River Elegy” television series that argued that Chinese culture was backward and oppressive.

Contemplating the recent allegations over corruption and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Dan Hodges argues that nobody cares about football corruption – or racism, diving, biting or any of the sport’s range of controversies – because when it’s match time we are only interested in our team winning.

The New York Times reports on how Poland’s ardour towards the US has cooled in recent years and Poles are focusing on becoming a more integral part of Europe. The intensity of [the] love affair has diminished,” says the paper.

The bulk of the report is finished, having been drafted by 259 scientists from 39 countries over the last four years, with the help of more than 600 contributing authors.

The Stockholm meeting, which started on Monday and is closed to the public and journalists, is finishing its most widely-read section: a 31-page summary for policymakers that governments have to approve before release, in consultation with some of the scientists who wrote it.

The summary is based on the larger report and its basic conclusion – that human influence on the climate caused most of the global warming recorded since 1951 – cannot change.

But the way its many findings are expressed are very much up for debate and with just one day left before the summary is due to be released on Friday morning, delegates are braced for another long night tonight. Read more

The climate change talks in Doha have come to a predictably acrimonious conclusion. As well as the baffling technical, economic and scientific challenges involved, the diplomatic deadlock throws up a fascinating question of political philosophy – do the citizens of one country have responsibilities to people in other parts of the world? If so, what are they? Internationalists might respond that we should have equal obligations to all human-beings. But, as a matter of fact, that is not how practical politics or human emotions work. Most people are willing to do much more for the people who are closest to them: family and neighbours. They also usually feel more willing to help compatriots than people on the other side of the world. They might, however, feel some obligation, or desire, to help people in far-off places. But how far do those obligations stretch?

Those questions lie at the heart of a fascinating new academic enterprise, pioneered by Hakan Altinay, a Turkish academic. I come across a lot of schemes to improve the world. But Altinay’s efforts to promote the idea of a “global civics” is one do-gooding idea that might actually really do some good. Read more

He was young, he was from French-speaking Senegal, and his English was excellent. But at the end of yet another briefing in English at the UN climate talks this week, he made an urgent plea. “This subject is so technical it makes it very difficult for those who speak English as a second language,” he said. “So please could we have translators at the next briefing?”

Good luck, muttered a nearby native English speaker. “We can’t understand most of it either.” Read more

Chief UN climate official Christina Figueres at the opening of the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa. Photo Reuters

UN climate talks kick off this week in South Africa, with delegates from nearly 200 countries trying to produce a global pact that legally obliges countries to stop emitting so much carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

The World

with Gideon Rachman

Gideon became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok. He also edited The Economist’s business and Asia sections.

His particular interests include American foreign policy, the European Union and globalisation.